If you have any overdue books from the Morristown & Township Library, you might want to return them on Thursday.
“Get ’em in, I would say!” said library board President Nancy Bangiola with a gleeful laugh.
The library, closed since a May 3 explosion damaged the 1917 wing of the building, will re-open the undamaged 2006 wing on Thursday at 1 p.m. Library officials hope to resume most library services, and even add some new ones, Nancy said.
“We’re thrilled to be opening finally. It’s been an unbelievable road,” she said.
But an official celebration will wait for a few more weeks, she said, to ensure that everything is “quiet, orderly and calm,” the way a library should be.
“We’re a little bit shy,” Nancy acknowledged.
The town today issued a 90-day occupancy certificate to enable the library to re-open using generator power.
“It’s a go,” said Fritz Reuss, Morristown’s construction official.
Jersey Central Power & Light has run a new power line to a new transformer outside the building. Now the library’s architectural firm must submit interior wiring plans for town approval, said Fritz.
While much work remains, “We’re thrilled they’re finally going to be re-opening, even if just partially,” said Morris Township Mayor H. Scott Rosenbush.
What caused the powerful basement explosion, which buckled a floor, blew out windows and damaged doors, remains under investigation. Jersey Central Power & Light and Public Service Electric & Gas have said they are not to blame.
Nancy said she hoped that the historic 1917 wing can be reopened this year, but she was hesitant to hazard a guess.
“The foundation of that building was destroyed, the floor was destroyed. We just recently excavated that floor. We must rebuild the foundation under a standing building,” she said.
Officials had hoped this week’s partial reopening would have occurred last summer. But the blast scattered asbestos that had to be painstakingly removed from the 1917 wing. And arranging for new exterior electric and gas lines also was challenging, said Nancy, who has been appointed to another five-year term as a library trustee by Morristown Mayor Tim Dougherty.
“This was a gigantic undertaking opening this building,” said the board president, who is comfortable with the delays.
“All the utilities were concerned about doing this right and doing this safely, and that takes time, and that’s okay with me,” she said.
“This is a public building and it needs to be safe. I’d rather have it be January and have it right.”
Another explosion–also unsolved– shut down the library in 1994. Amazingly, nobody was injured by either blast. Fast work by library staff evacuated the building moments before the explosion last spring.
Mayors Dougherty and Rosenbush and Maria Norton, newly promoted director of the library, are scheduled to make a formal announcement on Wednesday.
For a little while, at least, the library will continue operating a temporary satellite office on 88 South Street. Nancy said it may accommodate some library staffers whose offices were damaged by the May explosion.
Entrance to the library will be through side and rear entrances; the central 1933 wing of the library that fronts South Street has not yet received a green light to reopen, said Fritz Reuss, the town construction official.
Starting Thursday, library patrons should have access to the history department, in an undamaged portion of the basement, Nancy said.
“We’re very excited,” she said.
